中美贸易非均衡影响因素实证研究-总体与电子产业比较

Chapter 1- Introduction

The  following  paper  will  explore  the  relationship  of  different  trade  factors  on  the  trade imbalance  between  the US  and  China.  First  by  examining  the  relationship  of  common macroeconomic  factors  on  the  overall  trade balance,  and   then  comparing  the  results  to  an equivalent analysis on the electronics industry, the largest most imbalanced subsection.

1.1 Research Background

The United States of America and  the People’s Republic of China currently represent the two largest economies in the world, two of the three most populated countries in the world, and two of the four largest countries by total area in the world. These are the only two countries that can legitimately be described as modern day superpowers. 

For thousands of  years, China was one of the most advanced civilizations in the world, with the worlds largest population and economy. But several hundred years ago, was overtaken by  European  colonial  powers,  who  for  all  of  their faults  made  the  world  a  smaller  place.  By traveling all over the world and  exploring different places, European powers planted the seeds for globalization and global trade. This allowed the countries of Europe to reign supreme for a few hundred years, expanding their influence and showing the benefits of trade. 

During this time, China was plagued with foreign power occupation problems, as well as other domestic issues, and China's global power slowly faded away. After the conclusion of the second  world  war,  the  United  States  emerged  as  a super  power,  a  strong  cultural  and  world economic leader. After the collapse of the Soviet Union the United States became the worlds sole superpower. 

But  over  the  last  decade,  there  has  been  a  new  economic  giant  rising  in  the  East,  that giant  is  China.  After the  opening  and  reform  of  China  by  Deng  Xiaoping  in  1978,  China  has been  growing  at  a  breakneck  pace, averaging  double  digit  annual  growth  for  nearly  40  years. With the population of China, this has put China neck and neck with the US and in competition to be the worlds largest economic power in the comind decades. 

The development of China has been one of the most beneficial events in modernhistory, raising hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty, it has also been beneficial for the rest of the world. During this period of growth, China has become the manufacturing giant of the world, and  “Made  in  China”  has  been  dubbed  a  national  catchprhase encompassing  anything  and everything manufactured in China. The scale and size of China has allowed the rest of the world to purchase goods at previously unimaginable prices. While the benefits are numerous, for both the US and China in this specific situation, controversy has also arisen. 

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1.2 Purpose of Research

The purpose of this thesis research is to uncover the primary macroeconomic factors that contribute  to  the  US  China Trade  Imbalance.  Although  there  has  already  been  a  significant amount of research on the causes of this bilateral trade balance, it is almost exclusively limited to using  a  single  factor  to  analyze  the  trade  balance,  and  exclusively analyzing  the  total  balance. This thesis looks to not only explore the driving forces behind the overall trade balance, but also look at the largest contributing industry and provide a comparison of the driving factors between the two.

One  specific  industry  where  trade  imbalance  is  especially  noticable  is  the  Electronic goods industry, where China has taken  the majority of the worlds manufacturing of electronic goods, despite the fact that many of them were originally developed and invented in the United States. The electronics industry represents the largest sector in the trade imbalance, which is why special attention was paid to it in the following thesis.

The electronics industry in many peoples minds represents the idea of technology, so the massive deficit in the manufacturing of this industry is frightening to many. The massive trade balance  has  led  to  many  American government  officials  believing  unfair  trade  practices  are leading  to  the  massive  trade  imbalance.  But  what  are the  actual  reasons  for  the  existing  trade imbalance between China and the US. The goal is to find the answers to the questions below, as well as to show how commonly accepted factors for influencing overall trade balance, affect the electronics industry specifically. Below are the questions we hope to be able to answer over the course of this analysis.

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Chapter 2- Literature Review

2.1 Trade Balance Introduction

In  the  sections  below,  a  brief  introduction  is  given  on  where  trade  balance  fits  into  the overall  international trade  and  economic  system.  The  trade  balance  theory  then  leads  on  to existing research on the subject in the same field. 

2.1.1 Balance of Trade Concept

The concept of Balance of Trade is the difference in value over a period of time between a country's imports and exports of goods and services, usually expressed in the unit of currency of  a  particular  country  or  economic  union.  If  the exports  of  a  country  exceed  its  imports,  the country is said to have a favorable balance of trade, or a trede surplus. Conversly, if the imports exceed exports, an unfavorable balance of trade, or a trade deficit exists. The Balance of Trade is part of a larger economic unit, the Balance of Payments. (Britannica 2014)

The Balance of Payments, is where countries record monetary transactions with the rest of the world. The transactions are marked as either credit or debit, and broken into two seperate categories,  the  current  account,  and  capital accountand  financial  account.  Current  account represents goods, services, incomes, and current transfers. The capital account reprsents physical assets  such  as  a  building  or  a  factory.  The  financial  account  represents  assets pertaining  to international monetary flows, business or portfolio investments. (Heakel 2014)

Before further diving into the Balance of Trade, it is important to understand how it fits into  the  overall  economic  unit known  as  the  Balance  of  Payments.  As  to  understand  the importance,  and  value  of  assessing  the  Balance  of Trade,  one  of  the  largest  factors,  if  not  the largest factor when assesing and analyzing any trade relationship.

2.1.2 Balance of Payments

The  balance  of  payments,  then   is  the  sum  of  the  balance  on  current  account  and  the balance on capital and financial account. It is important to understand that the deficit indicated by current account, is financed through activities recorded in capital and financial accounts (if it is  not  net  errors  and  omissions  will  correct  it).  This  means  then that the  sum  of  the  current account and the capital and financial account is equal to 0. (Edge 1999)

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2.2 Related Research

The following sections will break down the research of several other economic scholars, looking at their findings as well as methods and how they are related to this thesis' composition. The sections are divided into two parts, the first of which is what is considered foreign research. This paper is being written for a Chinese University, so despite the fact that I am American, all research that originates in the US or outside of China is considered foreign research. Domestic research indicates any material sourced from China.

2.2.1 Domestic Research

The  first  paper  analyzed  in  the  domestic  research  is  an  older  one  dating  back  to  2004, published  in  the Technology  Time  Journal,  titled  “US-China  Trade  Deficit:  An  Emprical Research.” This paper is similar to the intended goal of this thesis, however it is much older and therefore  may  offer  contrary  results.  The  author  uses  the Ordinary  Least  squares  method  to estimate  the  effect  of  variables  on  the  US  and  China  trade  balance.  The conclusions  from  his paper  are  that  there  is  no  long-run  steady  cointegrating  relationship  between  US  China trade deficit and RMB's exchange rate.  

The  author  claims  that  the  true  reason  of  US  China  trade  deficit  is  the  comparative advantages  China  has enjoyed  in  labor-intensive  and  resource-consuming  products,  along  with US failure to playing role of its advantages in high tech products owing to export control policy against  China.  Multi-variable  econometrical  analysis  indicates  that US China  trade  deficit  is positively  related  with  the  US  GDP  and  China's  GDP  respectively,  whereas  RMB's exchange rate  is  insignificant  on  statistics  and  has  no  effect  on  Us  China  Trade  Deficit,  given  other variables  constant. This  finding  that  the  increase  of  China's  GDP  reults  in  the  addition  of  US-China trade deficit is greatly contrary to the traditional viewpoint. The logic behind the result is that  the  United  States  does  not  fully  play  its  role  of comparative  advantages  owing  to  the  US export  control  policy  against  China  under  the  two-country complementary  trade  structures. Moreover, US China trade deficit may partly be attributed to the discrepancy of the two countries trade statistics. (Shen 2004)

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Chapter 3- US China Trade Imbalance ....................... 16

3.1 The Evolution of US China Trade Imbalance ..................... 16

3.1.1 Overall Trade Balance ..........18

3.1.2 Overall Trade Balance Industry Breakdown ..................... 19

Chapter 4- Trade Imbalance Factor Analysis ........ 23

4.1 Model Introduction............... 23

4.1.1 Analysis Method .......... 24

Chapter 5- Conclusion and Recommendations ........... 65

5.1 Conclusion ............. 65

5.1.1 Overall Trade Balance Conclusion ................. 65

5.1.2 Electronics Industry Trade Balance Conclusion ................... 66

Chapter 4- Trade Imbalance Factor Analysis

The following sections will introduce the data, model, method, and results of this thesis' main analysis.

4.1 Model Introduction

When doing econometric analysis, the first thing decision to make is what model to use, and why. However, any advanced scholar knows that you do not simply first choose the model, then find the data and choose the topic, a mistake made during this process. Advanced  scholars will instead, first choose what should be analyzed, then find the data, and finally choose a model that fulfills the purpose of the research, and can accurately analyze the data.

In the leadup to this thesis, the original idea was to first use a simple multiple regression analysis,  the  idea  being  that all data  and  factors  would  be  represented  as  time  series  data. Multiple regression analysis in its most simple form comapres the relationship of multiple time series against each other, and tests the strength of their relationship. Before this is done though, this data must be tested in a multitude of different ways to ensure that it meets the requirements to be  used  to  effectively  measure  their  relationships.  After  all  data  for  this  analysis  had  been collected,  there was at  one  point  as  many  as  15  different  variables  being  tested  for  their relationship with the trade balance. The vast majority of them were eventually ruled out because of limited statistical relationship to the trade balance, despite ample real world evidence of their effect. Factors such as advanced labor shortage, cost of labor, transportation costs, among others were ruled out in favor of more traditional factors.

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Chapter 5- Conclusion and Recommendations

5.1 Conclusion

The  following  section  will  discuss  the  main  takeaways  from  this  statistical  analysis,  as well as what these mean, and explanations for why these results are the way they are.

5.1.1 Overall Trade Balance Conclusion

1. Overall trade balance is more sensitive to changes in US GDP than China GDP because the US  is  more  reliant  on China  for  production  of  goods.  With  the  US  being  heavily  reliant  on consumption to drive growth, any GDP growth will result in more consumption. This growth in consumption  leads  to  an  increase  in  demand,  which  cannot  be  met by  the  domestic  market, therefore imported goods fill the demand. In the extremely competitive US, low cost is key, and because of the labor cost advantage China has, they are able to beat many domestically produced goods. This results in an increase in the trade deficit. 

2.  Foreign  Exchange  plays  a  minor  role  in  affecting  the  electronics  trade  balance.  and  is statistically significant, but not statistically strong enough to say that is the main cause. Foreign exchange undoubtedly determines to an extent the value of the goods being traded between them, but does not influence price enough that it causes significant changes in the trade balance, this factor  is  likely  more  influentially  in  some  specific  industries,  but  only  slightly  related  to the overall changes.

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